


Favourable Bargains

by TottWriter



Series: Shards of Reality [7]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: "Modern" Fantasy AU, Fairies, Haikyuu!! Fantasy Exchange 2018, M/M, gratuitous use of banter, modern as in 80s-esque
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-05
Updated: 2018-11-06
Packaged: 2019-08-19 05:53:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16528658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TottWriter/pseuds/TottWriter
Summary: It was just a night out. A night to escape his problems, for a little while at least. It wasnota night to meet a troublesome drunk (probably) from another world and gain a whole set ofnewones.It happened anyway, because since when did he get what he actually wanted?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [imaginary_dragonling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginary_dragonling/gifts).



> This was written for the HQ Fantasy Exchange 2018 and is my gift for [imaginary dragonling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginary_dragonling)! I, er...got a little bit carried away. (Again.)

 

> _Up all night for music,_
> 
> _Down to dance again_
> 
> _Take care, should you go clubbing_
> 
> _For fear of fairy men._
> 
> _Tall folk, kind folk;_
> 
> _Wandering and charming._
> 
> _Red jacket, black hair,_
> 
> _And smirk that’s quite disarming!_
> 
> _~Inspired by ‘The Fairies’ by William Allingham_

 

Neon lights and thumping bass filled the air above a press of bodies gyrating to the beat. It was hot. Hot and loud, every half-second measured by music loud enough that it was felt rather than heard.

The club was packed as only Saturday night could make it: close on a thousand people in varying states of inebriation jammed within the walls of the old industrial unit on the edge of town. Kei had lost track of time; lost track of how many drinks he’d had; lost track of everything except the constant, steady beat of the music which drummed steadily in his bones. This, this was living. Heady and dreamlike, all his problems temporarily banished by the DJ.

And then—abruptly—the spell was broken as a random woman appeared in front of him, smiling in that would-be-enticing way which meant he’d caught her eye. She moved closer, somehow contriving to sway her hips in the almost non-existent space she’d carved out as she approached.

Suddenly the heat was too much. The music too loud—his ears rang and the air was filled with the stench of human sweat. He wrinkled his nose with disgust as she bit at her bottom lip, shaking his head and backing up. Air. He needed air, needed to escape the throbbing bass and flickering lights. Needed to clear his mind—he hadn’t drunk much but on an empty stomach hadn’t needed to. Clubbing was cheaper if he didn’t line his stomach first.

The damn woman followed him, weaving behind and clinging to his shirt as he all but fled for an exit. There was no point in turning to tell her to buzz off—though that didn’t stop him trying. If she heard him she made no reference to it, presumably thinking his stern expression was some kind of pathetic ‘bad boy’ routine.

“Please leave me alone,” he told her again, the moment they emerged into the crisp night air. “I’m not interested.”

“Aw, come on,” she drawled, the edges of her words slurred with alcohol. “I can show you a good time y’know.”

“I’m engaged,” Kei lied, the familiar excuse falling out of his mouth before his brain had caught up enough to remember it was no longer true. The alcohol burning through his veins wasn’t helping there, either.

“I don’t see the lucky lady anywhere,” the woman said, rather sourly. She looked as though she’d started to sober up a bit—at least enough to realise she’d left the club and probably wouldn’t be getting back in or finding a hookup.

“Not her scene,” Kei replied. That part was true enough, at least.

At this, the woman’s eyes lit up. She slid into the tone of voice she had presumably been trying on him in the club, pointless as that had been. “Oh, really, huh? What, she trusts you off on your lonesome?”

“Yes,” Kei said flatly. He swallowed, and the night air must have been clearing his head a little because he managed to add: “I’m very lucky.”

It was enough. The woman turned and left with a sniff, muttering: “Clearly,” under her breath with disgust.

The air fell still, although not silent—the muted thump of the music permeated the walls of the club, suffusing the narrow street with a throbbing beat. Kei shivered, cold after so long pressed against hot and sweaty bodies. He glared at the bouncer stood by the door who was so transparently enjoying the show, and turned on his heel.

I don’t know why I expected tonight to go any differently, he told himself, heading for home.

 

* * *

 

A quick look at his watch told him it was a little after one in the morning. The buses had long since stopped for the night—not that he had the change for a ticket in any case. Rifling through his pockets, he realised he didn’t even have enough to find a phone box and call for a cab. And of course, the longer he walked the more sober he got—his height only added to the curse of a fast metabolism. It was rapidly turning into a walk of shame, only with the added benefit of being pitch dark and freezing cold.

All in all, it was a poor end to the night, and he kept his head down as he walked, hoping to get the remainder of it over with before he sobered up completely. The sooner he slept off whatever inevitable hangover was going to result from all this, the better.

The streets were quiet and narrow, and Kei was walking through the cheap part of town with every sign of not paying attention to his surroundings. So when a figure lunged at him out of the shadowy space between buildings, it wasn’t entirely shocking. A good mugging was just about the only thing still missing from his shitty-night-out bingo card.

That was the alcohol, making him detached and dispassionate, but it was his returning sobriety which brought his arms up to fend off the attacker, shoving him away even as he stepped backward and contemplated whether calling for help would bring the right sort of backup.

The thought got about halfway through before it died off altogether, because the figure he’d thought a mugger was…wrong. All wrong. Rather than swearing or pulling a weapon, he’d gone stumbling back as though he were drunk himself, and seemed to be flickering, like a florescent bulb warming up.

“What the fuck,” Kei found himself saying, and against all common sense leant forward to examine the figure more closely. He’d seen some weird things before—between portals and propaganda for the war effort, most people had—but this about took the strawberry shortcake.

His attacker groaned, form stabilising into that of a tall man with dark hair. He was dressed in the sort of imitation old-fashioned clothes Kei expected of drunks at a costume party, and stared back at him as though he’d been personally affronted.

Definitely a drunk from a costume party then.

“Do you mind?” the man asked, getting to his feet and brushing himself down. Something about him looked…off, although in the dim light Kei couldn’t work out what. “What was that for?”

“Oh, right, I forgot my manners,” Kei drawled, alcohol helping the remark drip off his tongue. “I’ll just casually hand over my money and keys shall I? Nice try, but I have better things to be doing.”

“You think I was trying to rob you?” the man cried. “You wound me—I would never stoop so low.” He added, raising his chin and staring off into the distance: “Not even after fate has seen fit to strand me in this highly disagreeable world.”

Kei raised an eyebrow, taking a slight step back. Great. A crazy drunk from a costume party. Time to go. For parting words, he said: “I suggest you go home and sleep it off.”

The man rolled his shoulders and looked around himself rather self-consciously, and Kei wasn’t stupid but he wasn’t particularly fast either, so he’d only made it a few steps down the alley before the drunk caught up and fell in step beside him. Annoyingly, for all of Kei’s height the stranger wasn’t much shorter than him.

“Yes, well, about that,” the man said, and Kei had to hand it to him: drunk as he clearly must be, there wasn’t any indication of it in his voice or the way he walked. “I’m actually in need of shelter and succour, as it happens. You won’t find me an ungrateful guest—”

“Absolutely not,” Kei snapped, picking up his pace. “Go away.”

The man grinned, apparently not interested in listing to Kei at all, and matched his increased speed. “Are you always this rude to travellers seeking aid?” he asked calmly. “No wonder your world has such a poor reputation, if this is your people’s idea of hospitality.”

Kei stopped as they reached the end of the street, and its junction with the main road. The last thing he wanted was this nutcase following him home.

“Listen,” he said. “I’m being reasonable here. You need to go home and sleep off whatever it was you took, and rethink your life choices while you’re at it.”

The man—and irritatingly, he happened to be rather good-looking—raised an eyebrow at him.

“Are you simply unfamiliar with the term ‘traveller’ then?” he asked. “Because it refers to an individual who is currently a considerable and often insurmountable distance from their home, and requiring of an alternative form of accommodation.”

“That’s what hotels are for,” Kei pointed out.

“Alas,” the man replied, hand on heart, and Kei knew where this was going even before he added: “I find myself without appropriate currency for such an option, and therefore must throw myself upon the mercy of handsome strangers.”

Kei stared at him. There was something…something had been niggling at the back of his mind. Not exactly a wrongness with the stranger, but something odd about him. Something about his speech and appearance which didn’t quite add up. He didn’t fit.

“Where are you from, exactly?” Kei asked, trying not to sound as curious as he suddenly felt. This was just a random stranger who wouldn’t leave him alone, after all.

“Ah, wouldn’t you like to know,” the man said, grinning.

“Yes,” Kei replied flatly. “I mean, that’s why I asked. But if you want to carry on being all vague and suspicious then go right ahead. I can leave you right here with an entirely clean conscience and head home.”

The grin faltered. “Oh now come on!” the man cried. “Since when did you mortals get like this? Whatever happened to falling for a charming stranger and lending them aid?”

Kei stared at the man, keeping his face as level as possible under the circumstances. Given that he wasn’t entirely sober there was no telling how well he had managed. He had a pretty good feeling about it though, and chanced one more reply.

“I’m sorry, ‘mortals’? Are you really that full of yourself?”

The man winced, and flickered the way he had back in the alleyway. In the better light of the main road’s lamps and traffic, it was more obvious—his whole body seemed to blink out of existence momentarily. Worse, when he solidified again the tips of his ears were briefly visible: pointed instead of round. Kei bit back an actual scream, but it was a close run thing. He staggered backwards, swearing loudly, and tripped on the kerb. Arms pinwheeling he felt himself falling—

“WAIT!” the man cried, arms reaching out.

Kei stopped. Halted dead in mid-air, as suddenly as if he’d hit pause on a VHS player. His brain stuttered, caught in a loop of panic and disbelief and repeating over and over: ‘What. What. What—’

“Shit!” the man cried, darting forward.

He grabbed Kei and somehow dragged him across the road to the far side, waving his hands oddly as they went. Kei noticed, in a casual, detached sort of way which overlaid the ongoing mental drone of ‘what…what…’ that his gestures seemed to be doing something to the cars they were passing in front of. The angry beeping stopped, and after a few seconds the cars moved off again.

They ended up in another side street, lit erratically and bordered by the brooding, shuttered fronts of businesses that had closed for the night. Kei tried and failed to stand independently as the man let go of him. It was all he could manage to slump down against a wall and stare, wide-eyed. Apparently the stranger was similarly exhausted, bracing himself on his thighs as though he’d run a marathon.

“Right,” the not-man said after a minute of mutual staring, straightening himself up again. There was an unexpectedly human quality to his obvious discomfort. “So…uh…I guess I owe you an explanation.”

“What the hell are you?” Kei snapped hoping the question came out sounding angry rather than terrified.

“Yes. Well,” the not-man replied, and had the indecency to blush a little. “If you must know, I’m not from your world at all. I arrived here from a realm beyond your own, via a…a doorway, I would suppose.”

“A portal,” Kei said numbly. “You…you came from the other side of a portal. What, you…you just—just walked through?”

“Well, flew through, but I guess it’s all the same thing really,” the definitely-not-human said, seeming to perk up. “They still tell stories about us then?”

Kei shook his head. “No,” he said, and then before that could trigger any kind of response, added: “No, this isn’t happening. I’m drunk. Someone…someone fucking spiked my drink in the club.”

The not-man frowned. “I think you must be a touch addled from the shock,” he said. “Your words are all muddled.”

Kei stared. “I’m going home,” he said after a long enough silence to be sure the apparition in front of him wasn’t going to add anything else. “I’m not dealing with this.”

He turned and walked away. It was the drink. Someone had slipped him something, that much was obvious. He just needed to get home and sleep it off. That would fix things. He studiously ignored the hurried footsteps which started up after he was a short way down the road, and which kept pace with him as he walked.

“So, uh, you okay if I just tag along then?” came a slightly out of breath voice after a minute or so. “I did save your life you know. I feel as though a night’s shelter is the least you could offer in return.”

 

* * *

 

Kei didn’t reply to the stranger. If he acknowledged him, it meant the whole evening had been real. If he continued to blank him, it could be passed off as a bad trip; the result of someone fiddling with the drinks in a club which, if he were perfectly honest, he hadn’t picked for its reputable patrons.

It made sense. It was simple. It was a solution which dealt with all his problems barring one—that being the fact that he definitely wasn’t drunk enough to actually believe what he was telling himself anymore.

“So you’re going to let me in, right?” the stranger asked as they reached his apartment. “Because like I said, you owe me this.”

Right. Last straw. Kei froze with the key in the lock, and gritted his teeth. Never mind how strange he might look to anyone passing by his apartment block. Hallucination or not, he couldn’t help but reply:

“Oh yes, of course,” he drawled, rolling his eyes. “I’m going to let a total stranger I met in a dingy alleyway stay in my home after he followed me all the way back here—”

“Perfect!” the stranger said, grinning broadly. “I’m glad we could settle that so easily.”

As Kei turned and stared at him, open-mouthed, the stranger bowed and added:

“You can call me Kuroo. Terrible of me not to introduce myself earlier really, but you know how it is. You find yourself temporarily stranded on another world and your manners just slip right out of your head. My sincerest apologies for the mishap. And your name is?”

It was…late. Very late. Too late for any of this shit. Kei struggled to find words, but his head felt as though it had been stuffed with cotton wool.

“What?” he croaked at last.

Kuroo wrinkled his nose. “Oh you’re not trying that one on me. You must think I’m stupid or something.” He folded his arms. “Nevermind, it can wait I suppose. Now, I believe you were busy opening the door? It’s no good trying to worm your way out of it, we already have an agreement. If you don’t let me in this way I’m well within my rights to find another.”

“I’m not letting you in,” Kei said. “You must think I’m stupid.”

Kuroo rolled his eyes, muttering something which sounded a lot like ‘fine then’. He took a step back and eyed up the building.

“Do you inhabit the entirety of this…dwelling?” he asked, wrinkling his nose.

Kei shook his head. “It’s an apartment block,” he muttered sourly. “Lots of people live here. Now if you don’t mind, it’s been a very long, very trying night, and I’m going to leave you out here now. Goodbye.”

To his surprise, Kuroo made no attempt to follow him. He simply watched as Kei walked through the outer door, apparently content not to push his luck any further. Kei found himself turning back to check once or twice all the same. He didn’t relax until he’d climbed the three flights of stairs to his apartment and closed and bolted the door behind him.

What an absolutely fucked up night.

He thought briefly about a shower to cleanse the odd, inexplicably tingly sensation along his arms and across his back—no doubt a result of the stress of being thrown in front of a car—but decided against it. Showers were too much effort. Everything was too much effort, even taking off clothes which reeked of cigarette smoke and increasingly stale alcohol.

In the end, it was all he could manage to take off his glasses before slumping forward onto his bed and passing out, fully dressed.

 

* * *

 

Morning found him nursing far less of a hangover than he’d been expecting, but with a mouth that tasted exactly like rot and a crick in his everything. He felt as though he’d slept in a ditch, rather than his bed. There was a draft, too—his bedroom window was open a crack, and he definitely didn’t remember doing that. He had an apartment full of houseplants specifically to reduce the effect of the city’s air pollution. How drunk must he have been to think opening one was a good idea?

No more clubbing for a while, he told himself firmly. You got it out of your system, now it’s time to get your shit together.

But the trouble was, that meant starting with himself. Groaning, he heaved himself upright, fumbling on the nightstand for his glasses before staggering across the room. Last night’s jeans were pressing on his bladder in an entirely unfortunate way, and not even the acrid taste of death on his tongue was more pressing than relieving that particular issue. Fumbling with the buttons as he went, he turned and nudged the door to the living room open with his shoulder.

“Not an unwelcome sight, I must say,” said an entirely too familiar voice.

Kei’s hand jerked, pulling the last button open and catching himself a glancing blow in the process. His extended curse was half shock, half pain—then all pain as he staggered backward and smacked his head on a shelf.

“Oh what the fuck?!” he cried, scrambling to coordinate his fingers enough to fasten his flies closed again. What was nearby that he could use as a weapon? “You— How did you get in here?”

Kuroo, draped across his sofa as though he owned the damn thing, simply shrugged.

“I said I’d find another way, didn’t I?” he offered, casually. “We made a bargain. It’s never worth trying to duck out of them. Incidentally I’m claiming another night for all the trouble you put me through on that front. And as your world is…surprisingly resistant to my shifting, I’d prefer an actual bed this time. Your chaise here really isn’t up to much.”

The only good thing about how much Kuroo seemed to talk was that it gave Kei half a chance to recover from his shock at finding the man in his apartment, and start planning for how to extract himself from the situation.

The odds of it all being a hallucination brought on by a spiked drink were low. Any substance powerful enough to still be in his system at this point would have done far worse than insert imaginary strangers into his life. That meant it was real—which in turn meant he was in trouble, because the only things in range of where he was stood were the shelf full of potted plants he had smacked his head on, and a waste paper basket. Neither were particularly noteworthy for their usefulness as improvised weaponry.

Still, there was also no sense in letting himself get into a panic, despite that he was all but there anyway. The stranger—his brain supplied the name ‘Kuroo’ from the dregs of the night before—had clearly been lying on his sofa for quite some time, and so far hadn’t committed any acts of murder or transparent theft. Probably. The bladder issue wasn’t letting up either, and there was still just a chance that this whole nightmare was an extended lucid dream brought on by deliberately going to the one nightclub he had always promised his now ex-fiancee he would steer clear of.

“Right,” he said aloud, dragging the word out a little. “Right then. Well, I’m not dealing with this until I’m awake, so I’m just going to…” He gestured in the direction of the bathroom. “I’d prefer it if you didn’t barge in, this time.”

He didn’t bother waiting for a reply. If it was real, he was probably screwed either way. If it wasn’t, he was already making enough of a fool of himself by talking to an empty room. The fact he couldn’t decide which of the two was the better option was not a comfort.

After bolting the door and dropping the blinds down over the window—he hadn’t imagined Kuroo saying he had flown through a portal last night, had he?—Kei finally managed to take care of his most pressing problem. That left just the more intimidating one then. Fantastic.

Without the keening discomfort of his bladder addling his thoughts, it was harder to pass off everything which had happened as unreal. The throb of pain from his head was genuine enough, as was the stench of stale alcohol and cigarettes which clung to his clothes.

Okay. Okay, fine. So he’d somehow brought home a probably-not-human person from the far side of a portal, one who possessed the sort of unnatural abilities which the military-controlled Portal Response Unit were constantly denying they had access to.

What the hell is he, Kei wondered, leaning over the sink to splash his face with cold water. It would have to do for freshening himself up—there was no way he intended to strip naked all the while Kuroo was anywhere nearby. He’d somehow managed to get inside on his own, there was no telling what else he might do.

Cold water wasn’t enough to settle his nerves, and nor was the mundane, grounding ritual of cleaning his teeth. But it left him feeling slightly more human and he wasn’t about to hide in his bathroom all day, so there was nothing for it but to put on the most collected face he could manage and confront his unwelcome guest. He hesitated before drawing the bolt on the door back, but not for long. Who knew what Kuroo was up to by now.

…Oh. Well. Apparently he hadn’t even bothered to move from the sofa, still draped across it as though he were imitating a throw or something.

“How did you get in here?” he asked, the words slipping out halfway before he even realised. Damn. This was what came of the absence of caffeine in his system.

“Oh, I climbed up and opened a window,” Kuroo said, shrugging. “I wasn’t about to sleep out on the street. The window in your bedroom was a bit of a tight squeeze, but I did have your permission. Also, not that I can sense any to begin with, but if you were planning to try and ward me out, it won’t work.”

“Right,” Kei said blankly, because what else was he supposed to say to that? The windows were locked on the inside. In a sense it didn’t particularly matter if it was the truth or simply fabrication—he was equally unprepared for either.

Steeling himself, he marched straight past Kuroo to the kitchenette. Perhaps if he ignored his unwanted guest, he would get the hint and leave. Stubborn denial had always served him pretty well in the past.

But of course that would have been far too convenient and neat. Instead, he found himself with an additional shadow—one far more irritating than the original, who couldn’t seem to help himself from poking his nose in all of Kei’s cupboards and asking the most irritating questions, such as how the stove worked, or why he was making rice at breakfast time.

Kei tuned at least half of Kuroo’s chatter out entirely, but there was no denying that the fragments he actually heard gave what, for lack of any better way to define it, he decided to call context for his visitor. Whatever world lay on the far side of the portal Kuroo had come through was lacking in a number of the things he took for granted, such as microwave ovens and rice cookers. The thought niggled at him though, in an odd way which he couldn’t quite place—wait. The portal. The portal.

He had never particularly considered himself a dramatic person. There was so seldom a need to waste time or energy on responses. Even his overblown theatrics after his initial meeting with Kuroo had half their roots in cheap alcohol and exhaustion.

So it was not with a loud or sudden shout that he chose to react. He simply let his gaze snap to Kuroo’s face, and held up a hand to cut the man off in the middle of babbling about how food was distributed in his own world.

“The portal,” he said flatly. “Did it close before I met you?”

Kuroo frowned. “No? Why would it close?”

Despite all his usual self-control, Kei gaped. Oh no. Oh, no no. Absolutely not.

“What do you mean, ‘why’?” he snapped tersely. “That’s what portals do! We have to get back—if it was recent there’s still a chance—”

Kuroo flapped a hand lazily. “It’s fine!” he said. “I wouldn’t have come through if it wasn’t safe. What do you take me for?”

“Well, last night I took you for a drunk, but right now I’ll settle on complete idiot—”

“That portal has been settled for months,” Kuroo said flatly. “Pretty small still, true, but there’s no reason to worry. It’ll grow over time, I’m sure of it.” There was a short silence, before he added: “I think that’s your breakfast burning.”

Kei swore, startled out of his daze and burning his fingers as he rushed to save his omelette. It was too late for it really. The bottom was black and that never made for an enjoyable breakfast—although the look on Kuroo’s face as he realised that he hadn’t been catered for as well almost compensated for the light blistering of his fingertips, and the rather unpleasant prospect of charred food.

“What happened to being a host!” he cried, apparently outraged.

“You are trespassing,” Kei said coldly. “And that’s the least of what you’ve done. You have harassed me, stalked me, knocked me into traffic and then broke into my apartment while I was sleeping. I don’t know who—or what—you are, or where you came from, and I don’t particularly care so long as you leave me out of whatever joyride you think you’re on.”

He could blame the lack of caffeine for his outburst, and the throbbing headache which had robbed him of his senses. He was scolding a non-human entity who had broken into his securely locked apartment without any apparent difficulty, as though there were no danger of angry retribution. He was probably doomed. It would just about wrap up his life to be brutally murdered by some alien creature he himself had antagonised.

She always said my attitude caused my problems, he thought, oddly detached. Damn her for being right.

But to his astonishment, rather than getting angry Kuroo’s eyes widened and he raised his hands, palms outstretched.

“Wait, wait wait wait,” he said, leaning back against the counter top as he gestured for Kei to be quiet.

Somewhere outside a siren wailed, and Kei briefly found himself wondering if whatever disaster they were headed towards could possibly be more excruciating than the one he found himself in at that particular moment.

“So you…you don’t… What, they don’t tell the stories any more?”

Kei raised an eyebrow. “What stories? Are—are you honestly claiming to be some kind of celebrity now?”

Kuroo laughed, an awful, braying sound like an animal in pain. “What? No! Why would I— Oh this makes so much more sense!” he cried, throwing his head back and running his fingers through his hair.

Kei watched the display from his small table, unamused and definitely not finding it attractive. After a few seconds he came to his senses and firmly turned his gaze to his plate, massacring his omelette in an attempt to separate out the least burnt parts. He was interrupted by a pair of hands which settled either side of his plate. Their owner grinned down at him.

“I believe a re-introduction is in order. I understand a little better where your misconceptions of my character stem from now.”

“Could it be your appalling manners?” Kei suggested, laying his chopsticks down beside his bowl. The smell of burnt egg was too strong to stomach. So much for breakfast. “Or your blatant disregard for boundaries?”

Kuroo rolled his eyes. “I can’t believe we left you alone for a couple of centuries and you managed to get worse than us for social rules,” he muttered. Straightening up, he cleared his throat and bowed, before adding: “As I mentioned before, you may call me Kuroo. To answer your questions—voiced or otherwise—I happen to have travelled to your world from…ah, it’s hard to translate, but of old it used to be referred to as Faerie. After my people. The Fairies.”

“Right,” Kei said slowly. Apparently the morning was only going to get more ludicrous, not less. “You expect me to believe that you’re…a fairy?” He looked Kuroo up and down. “I was under the impression that fairies were considerably, ah, smaller. And had wings.”

“Well, in my other form, yes,” Kuroo replied, apparently unconcerned. “But it’s something of an inconvenience being that small all the time, so we usually only shift when flying, or to fit through small spaces. I’m not usually this big, mind you. Humans seem to have gotten larger since my people last visited.”

“Which was a couple of hundred years ago,” Kei said flatly. Great. So he had a genuinely crazy uninvited houseguest with no compunctions about breaking and entering. That was so much more reassuring.

On other hand, it did at least make some of the night before’s incidents less intimidating. With this additional context it seemed far more likely, for example, that his memories of pausing halfway through a fall to the floor were simply an invention of his own mind, brought on by alcohol and mild trauma. In his addled state he’d assumed that everything was a hallucination at first, but things didn’t have to be so clear cut. The far more reasonable explanation was that while still drunk and frustrated with his own evening, he’d run into Kuroo—who was clearly not in his right mind—and fallen prey to his outlandish claims due to his own heightened state of suggestibility.

Yes. Yes, that made perfect sense.

It categorically did not explain how Kuroo then managed to pick up his uneaten omelette, examine the plate, spin it round and—grinning like a five year old—present it to Kei, miraculously intact and unburned.

...Okay, so, new idea. Perhaps Kuroo was actually telling the truth about the portal, and hailed from a world where…where…

“Jeez, I can practically hear you thinking,” Kuroo said, pulling up a chair opposite Kei and setting the plate back down in front of him. “Just admit it: you’re impressed, right? Never met a fairy before?”

“You are not a fairy,” Kei snapped. “This…this is not the mark of being a fairy. You…you… Everyone knows there are impossible things on the far side of portals. Some sort of world—”

“Where fairies live is totally possible and a real place, yes,” Kuroo said. “What is so difficult about this?”

“Humans have settled on the far side of portals before,” Kei snapped, eyeing up the omelette. It smelled suspiciously good, steaming gently and against all the laws of entropy. “It’s well documented throughout history that people have ventured through and been cut off, and that some have even returned, hundreds of years later, with so-called magical abilities impossible to be understood by the people of their time. But they were still human.”

“Oh, well, I’m sure every one of those humans could—”

Kuroo frowned, staring down at himself, and then checking his back. He looked a little troubled. “Er, hang on a moment,” he said. “I had it a minute ago.”

He frowned again, eyes closed and lips pursed. Kei raised an eyebrow.

“Having problems?” he asked, with every drop of saccharine sweetness he possessed. “Performance anxiety, perhaps?”

“You’re not exactly helping matters, you know that?” Kuroo replied, but there was an unexpected edge of desperation behind his would-be flippant words. Almost as though he actually believed he could turn into a fairy. “I don’t know why this isn’t working… Wait.”

Kuroo clapped his hands together and rubbed them, grinning. “We just need to get closer, that’s all. Come on, let’s go!”

The sound which Kei made in response was best described as a snort, although he’d been aiming for something a little more dignified. But seriously. Was this guy for real?

“You must think I’m entirely stupid,” he said flatly. “I’m not going anywhere, and you can stay away from me, too. You can’t just…just waltz into someone’s home and behave like you own the place. That’s not how things work in this world, and if you can’t accept that you shouldn’t have come in the first place.”

Kuroo didn’t reply, so Kei too advantage of the silence to rid himself of this nuisance for good: “Listen, if you’re so sure the portal is still going to be there you should go back through it already, before it does close. I’ll even give you some change for a phone call in case it’s gone, and you need to get help resettling. I’m being more than generous here after everything you’ve done, so I suggest you take me up on my offer before I change my mind and call for someone to physically remove you.”

Kuroo stared at him for several long seconds without speaking. There was a faintly wistful expression on his face which Kei studiously ignored. Finally, he nodded.

“Okay sure,” Kuroo said, raising his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I’ve outstayed my welcome. It’s understandable I suppose, given the circumstances. I think perhaps you may be correct that this is the wrong world for me. Still, you did at least permit me a roof over my head on this little venture, and I am appreciative of that fact. If I might ask one final boon of you before we part—your name?”

Kei frowned. There was something odd about the way Kuroo was watching him, something which set him rather off-balance.

“Tsukishima…Kei,” he said slowly, bowing the smallest amount that manners dictated. It was rather backwards to do an introduction right as they parted company, but then what else about their encounter had been normal? As long as it got the other man to leave, that was all that counted.

 

* * *

 

The apartment didn’t seem quieter due to the absence of Kuroo. That would have been impossible—the man had been asleep for the majority of the time he had been there, and he hadn’t even been there that long. No, the apartment was quieter because Kei no longer had a fiancee bustling around, pointing out all the inconveniences of his bachelor lifestyle and how he ought to fix them.

On balance it was a positive change. It wasn’t as though he’d ever been particularly invested in the idea of getting married. Still, it made things quieter, and particularly after the morning he’d had—no.

Irritated with himself for wondering whether Kuroo had found his portal back home or not, Kei stalked over to the record player and picked out something loud and raucous from his vinyl collection. It was the silence, that was all. It was still a Saturday morning novelty, one which would pass soon enough. Until such time as it did, he could drown it out with the loudest music his neighbours would tolerate.

By the time he had showered and dressed, and was almost done watering his plant collection, things had almost settled back to normal. There was something soothing about tending to his plants, much as he never admitted that to anyone else. Without anyone to interrupt him, he had time to check for dead leaves, too, and to make note of which were outgrowing their pots. If he had to live in an urban environment the least he could do was bring a little life to it, and there was always a degree of satisfaction in proving his brother’s initial comment that they would all be dead within a week increasingly misplaced.

Something rattled from his bedroom, which ought to have been impossible.

No, he told himself, setting down his watering jug and going to investigate. It’s just paranoia brought on by everything that happened last night and this morning.

Had he forgotten to close the window? He didn’t think so.

Oh.

With the curtains drawn back to let in light for his interior garden, Kuroo’s silhouette was readily apparent on the small ledge outside his bedroom window. How the man was holding on, he didn’t like to guess—how he’d managed to get up there was beyond his capability to imagine altogether. It wasn’t as though there was much to grab onto for climbing purposes.

The latch clicked, and he watched with all the impassiveness shock could provide as Kuroo pressed his fingers to the glass and slid it open before practically falling into the room. He turned a full somersault and landed on his feet, and had he been less shocked, Kei might have acknowledged the move as remarkably graceful.

As it was, all he had room for in his head was one thought: Police. Call the police.

“Ah, apologies for the sudden entrance!” Kuroo said, dusting himself off as Kei backed up towards the doorway. “I have a slight problem, and I was unsure how else to attract your attention.”

“There’s a buzzer,” Kei hissed, suddenly furious. He absolutely, categorically did not deserve this. What was happening to his life?

Kuroo squinted at him. “A buzzer?” he asked, before snapping his fingers, his face lighting up with transparent recognition. “Ah! The intercom! Well, unfortunately I hadn’t made note of which was your apartment before leaving, so I was unable to make use of it. I reasoned that as I had used the window before, it would cause the least amount of disruption.”

“Why are you here,” Kei snapped, taking another step or two back. The phone was just a short distance away in the main room. He only needed to stall for long enough to call for help.

Kuroo’s face fell. “Well…uh…I have something of a problem, truth be told.”

“The portal’s gone?” Kei asked. “I already gave you a number to call, this is not my problem! I am not getting involved.”

“Just wait before jumping to conclusions, will you!” Kuroo said, and against all Kei’s expectations he found himself coming to a halt.

It was as though his legs had stopped listening to him. He could still feel them, could still stand independently—but somehow he was stood still, and couldn’t quite work out how to start moving again.

“Oh, sure, so that works,” Kuroo muttered, as Kei bit down the highly undignified whimper which was his gut response as Kuroo took a step towards him.

“What the fuck did you do?” he snapped instead. Anger. Anger was good.

“I just need you to listen,” Kuroo said. “Please. And if you knew anything about me you would understand just how…significant it is for me to say that. But apparently you don’t. Apparently nothing in this whole damn world is how it’s supposed to be.”

“Are you going to explain that? Or just—”

“I’m stuck,” Kuroo said, walking over and sitting down on Kei’s sofa as though he owned the thing. “I found the portal, but I can’t shift for some reason. And like this I’m too big to fit. I don’t need to ‘resettle’ here or anything, I just need somewhere to stay while I work it out. While I find a way to turn back, or send a message to my friends and get some help.”

“You are not staying here. I refuse.”

Kuroo smiled awkwardly. “Ah, well…you see… Damn, I feel kinda guilty now.” He cleared his throat. “The thing is, you can’t actually do that.”

When Kei just stared at him, Kuroo nodded and carried on.

“Right, right. See, the thing about names is, they have power. Very important things, particularly to fairies, and right before I left your apartment you gave me yours. Willingly, even. That gives me power over you. Not a lot, in this place, but enough to keep you from turning me out. And I hadn’t actually planned to do that, not once I realised you had no way of knowing. I expected mortals to remember the stories about us, and if I’m honest, it chafes to be so underhanded. Still, needs must. I’ll find a way to compensate you for the trouble.”

Kei stared at him, locked in place enough that he wondered if Kuroo had somehow managed to freeze his entire body. It was impossible. It couldn’t be happening.

“Why me?” he managed to ask at last, after wrestling with his brain for control of his limbs and finding that he could move again—so long as it wasn’t in the direction of the phone. “Why not pick someone else?”

“I have my reasons, which are mine alone and not up for debate,” Kuroo said. “But never mind that. I don’t intend to stay any longer than it takes to find a way home again, so there’s no need to fret that you’ve signed your life away. I’ll even make a bargain—and to clarify, that’s considered binding among fairies. In return for offering hospitality to me, I will do my best to aid you with whatever you need. Once I go back through the portal, I’ll count our bargain complete. I’ll be gone completely, won’t bother you again.”

“Oh, so you’re granting the illusion of choice now? How considerate of you,” Kei said, narrowing his eyes as he walked across the room to lean on the wall. He scowled at Kuroo. “And what do you mean by ‘help’, exactly?”

Kuroo shrugged. “I can’t seem to do as much as I would normally be able to, but I am a fairy still,” he said. “I can fix things, smooth people over, turn the odds in your favour… lots of things.” He leant forward on the sofa, rubbing his temples with one hand. “You really don’t have stories about my people anymore? This stuff used to be common knowledge.”

This was ridiculous. Everything Kuroo was saying was ridiculous. Kei was torn: part of him still struggled to believe what was actually happening, but the rest of him was already reconciling it as exactly the sort of bullshit which he ought to expect out of life. It had to shit on someone, after all. Whyever had he expected it to be anyone other than himself?

“We do have fairy stories, as it happens,” he said eventually. “They’re for little children, and I don’t particularly make a habit of reading children’s stories.”

Kuroo shrugged. “Might’ve kept your name a bit closer if you had,” he remarked, settling back into the chair. He grinned, all teeth and twinkling eyes. “Still, lucky for you that you didn’t, eh? Not many people manage to make such favourable bargains with fairies.”

Kei stared at him. Apparently this was his life now.

“Only think how delighted I am.”


	2. Chapter 2

Kei’s initial fears about his new compulsory houseguest turned out to be unwarranted. Not that he could have pinned down exactly what those fears _were_ , exactly. It was more just a sense of intense discomfort and unease, which was entirely justifiable given the manner in which Kuroo had so abruptly inserted himself into Kei’s life and spare room.

He’d been intending to turn that room into an office, though. It was decidedly inconvenient to have lost both the concrete outline he had made for the imminent future _and_ his backup plan. The fact that he’d lost both within a week was not a point in Kuroo’s favour, no matter how much ‘help’ the man claimed to be providing.

So far as Kei had seen it, no help had been provided at all. All Kuroo had _actually_ done in the days since his abrupt arrival was bombard him with invasive questions Kei had no desire to answer but somehow did anyway, and double his food bill. The financial impact on the other utilities remained to be seen.

“Who’s the woman?” Kuroo asked towards the end of his first week in the apartment. He held out a photograph from the box of things Kei had stashed in the spare room ready for collection, apparently having rifled through it to find the pictures Kei had carefully and methodically removed from frames and photo albums alike.

“We were engaged,” Kei found himself saying, instead of his planned suggestion that Kuroo learn the meaning of the words ‘private property’.

“Huh. Didn’t see you as— Wait…‘were’?”

“She broke it off,” Kei said flatly.

It was almost worth it, to see the usual, cocky expression on Kuroo’s face morph into one of pure mortification.

“Shit, _shit_ , I didn’t mean—”

Kei shrugged. “It was our parents’ idea,” he said, pulling his glasses down and examining the lenses. Mhmm. As he’d thought—needed cleaning. He took them off and fished the cloth out of his pocket, rubbing the smudges away as he spoke: “The marriage, I mean. They didn’t _arrange_ it as such but it was strongly encouraged. A neat and tidy solution. It made sense—to me, at least. I thought it made sense to her as well, but apparently I was wrong.”

With his attention focused on his glasses he didn’t see Kuroo’s expression. Doubtless he wasn’t missing much.

“What, you didn’t love her?” Kuroo asked, in exactly the sort of surprised tone of voice Kei had heard from idealist romantics. It was…well, it probably _shouldn’t_ have been a surprise, given that the man was apparently a fairy. Didn’t fairies usually crop up in the sorts of nonsense romance stories he had always studiously avoided?

“You don’t have to love someone to marry them,” Kei said, keeping his eyes on his lenses. There was a stubborn mark on one of them, which really did require his full attention to clean off. “Plenty of people do it for other reasons. Sensible ones.”

“Easier to change your mind though, if you don’t love the person.”

Kei gritted his teeth. This. This was what he didn’t like about personal questions. Everyone thought you wanted to hear their _opinions_ , as though that was actually going to change anything.

“Yes, well,” he said, slipping the glasses back onto his face and standing up. “It’s also easier to have an engagement to someone you are actually _allowed_ to marry.”

Kuroo fell silent. Good.

“Now, if you don’t mind,” Kei said, glad that he was capable of walking to the door and not being frozen in his tracks. “I am going out to replenish all the food that you seem to be eating. Feel free to start with that promised _help_ of yours, whenever you like.”

It had been a long time since Kei had given way to his emotions and lashed out at someone else because of them—as opposed to his usual reason which was to rile people up. He hadn’t come out to many people. Ordinarily the thought of doing so to a stranger would have filled him with a sort of quiet dread.

But Kuroo was different. In part because, truth be told, his life would be a _lot_ easier if the man was so offended or disgusted that he simply left. But there was also the fact that he was from another world—the more Kei mused on his outburst as he walked around the convenience store, the more he wondered if Kuroo had even _understood_ what he was getting at. No, it was obvious, wasn’t it?

He carefully and deliberately ignored his memory of Kuroo calling him a ‘handsome stranger’ on the night they’d met. That had nothing to do with anything.

 

* * *

 

Kuroo was quiet when he returned to the apartment. Apparently he’d been watching people out of the window of the spare room, because when Kei closed the front door behind him and staggered over to the kitchenette to lay down the bags, rather than actually _help,_ the man simply called from within the room:

“You know, I’ve been in your world a few days now and I _still_ keep seeing new people. Where are they all coming from?”

Kei rolled his eyes, and set to work unpacking rather than answer such a patently idiotic question. Where did Kuroo _think_ they were coming from?

The next comment came from much closer. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many people in my life, you know. Why do you live like this?”

Kei sighed. “It’s a city,” he said, giving Kuroo only the briefest glimpse. “This is what cities are like.”

“No,” Kuroo said, shaking his head. “Back ho—back where I come from we have cities too, and they’re nothing like this. There’s open spaces. Greenery that doesn’t live in pots scattered around apartments. The buildings don’t crowd over you so much. Honestly, between this and not being able to shift, I don’t think I’ve ever felt so claustrophobic before.”

“We have open spaces,” Kei said. “You’re welcome to go and find one.”

Kuroo sighed. “And you? Are you going to go out and find some space, or are you just going to stay in here forever?”

Kei scowled at him. “I don’t stay in here all the time. I literally just got back from being out. Besides, I‘ve had the week off work and I am making the most of it the way I _want_ to.”

“Ah, jobs! I forgot mortals have those,” Kuroo said.

Against his better judgement, Kei looked around from the cupboard and stared at the man leant against the doorway, looking as comfortable and relaxed as though it were his _own_ apartment.

“You don’t have a _job_ ,” he said, raising his eyebrows. “Why does that not surprise me.” A part of him was surprised that Kuroo hadn’t asked any more about the marriage thing—one way or another his silence on the matter struck him as strange—but if he could deflect onto Kuroo rather than talk about his _own_ personal life, so much the better.

“Why would I need one?” Kuroo asked, shrugging. “We don’t have money. I suppose a few people have something similar to a job. Blacksmiths, tailors and the like. Really good bakers, too. But that’s a passion thing rather than work, exactly. The court structure is a lot looser these days, so we’re hardly paying fealty or standing on ceremony all the time.”

“…Court?”

Kuroo waved a hand lazily. “Oh, it’s fairy stuff. Doesn’t matter. It’s mostly history in any case, so it’s not like it matters to someone who doesn’t enjoy _stories_ , right?”

“Ah…right, right,” Kei said, masking his irrational prickle of disappointment by turning to stow a selection of tins in a lower cupboard.

“Anyway, I stand by my point that you spend too much time locked inside,” Kuroo said. “I’m going stir crazy just seeing the same four walls all the time. How about you take me for a tour, eh? Hosts are usually bound to entertain their guests, and here I am, not even remotely entertained.”

Kei sighed. There went his good feelings toward Kuroo.

“Did you expect dinner and a show?” he asked, laying as much sarcasm into his voice as he could. Even before finishing his sentence he regretted it—Kuroo _always_ seemed to take things literally when it was least helpful.

He grinned as if reading Kei’s mind, and shifted his weight onto the other foot, grinning wickedly. “Honestly a walk would suffice, but if you’re offering…”

“I’m _not_ ,” Kei said, glaring at him as he stood. “Can’t you go for a walk by yourself?”

“Who, me? A stranger in your city, go off on my own? Why, _anything_ could happen. I could get lost, waylaid, set upon by wild animals—”

“There are no wild animals other than stray cats and a few birds in the city. You’re safe. And I highly doubt that anyone would bother to attack you. Dressed as you are you don’t look as though you have anything worth stealing.”

“And getting lost?”

Kei raised an eyebrow. “You were the one who described yourself as a traveller. If your sense of direction is _that_ bad then it’s your own fault.”

He told himself it wasn’t nice to hear Kuroo’s laugh, because that was entirely true. Kuroo had a laugh capable of making small children cry. It was, on every level, awful.

The sole redeeming factor it possessed was that it meant Kei had gotten past the man’s would-be cool exterior. It had only taken him a short while to realise that it was no easy task. Provoking a laugh out of the man—even one as objectively painful as Kuroo’s actually happened to be—was satisfying on an intellectual level.

“All the same,” Kuroo said, walking over. “If it’s not too much trouble a walk would be very much appreciated. Natural traveller I might be, but that just makes a guide all the more appreciated. It’s far more rewarding to learn something about the place you’re visiting as you explore.”

Kei intended to say no. He really did. The word was on the tip of his tongue, primed and ready to fall into the waiting silence, so it could _only_ be Kuroo’s apparent ‘power’ over him which turned it into a reluctant, resigned, but definitely audible: “Okay then, fine.”

He wasn’t entirely pleased by the prospect of wandering around with someone who looked like an actor from a terrible stage production though, which was why their first stop was Kei’s bedroom.

“I’m taller than you,” he said flatly, fishing out a pair of his work trousers. “And a little thinner I think, so these might be a bit tight around the waist. You can roll up the extra length at least. I’ve some old shirts somewhere around here too. Shoes I can’t help with.”

Kuroo held up the pair of grey chinos with obvious distaste. “You _wear_ these?” he asked. “How do you live with yourself?”

“They’re for _work_ ,” Kei said flatly. “It doesn’t matter what they look like, they’re relatively smart and comfortable, and the fabric is long-lasting. You wouldn’t fit in my jeans even if I _was_ inclined to lend them, which I am not.”

“Fine, fine, but if I’m going to be here _any_ length of time I refuse to keep wearing them.”

Kei smirked, thinking that there were at least _some_ benefits to Kuroo’s arrival. It had been a while since he’d been able to exercise his wit on such an easy target. “Well then,” he said, taking great pleasure in the words. “I suppose you’d better get a _job_ then, so you can pay for them.”

There was a short silence.

“I just want to point out that that was uncalled for,” Kuroo said, but there was no sincerity in his apparent offence. “Here I am, doing my best, and this is what I get?”

“Just get changed,” Kei said. “If you’re so insistent on this walk we should get going before the parks get any busier than they are already.”

 

* * *

 

If Kuroo had been irritating in his own clothes, it was nothing to his attitude while wearing Kei’s. The entire ride down in the lift he complained about the fit, and the dreadful style, and the way the label in the old shirt Kei had given him itched, and that the shoulders weren’t wide enough…

Kei found himself, against all reason, glad to be out on the busy Tokyo streets. At least Kuroo seemed to have enough sense not to keep complaining where everyone could hear them.

“Well, here we are,” Kei said. “We’re walking. Congratulations, I hope it’s everything you’d dreamed of.”

“Oh, come on now, it’s not so bad! It’s good to stretch your legs,” Kuroo said. “Exercise is important.”

Kei glared at him out of the corner of his eye. “I exercise,” he said. “And I prefer not to be out in this air all the while I can help it. It’s not healthy.”

Kuroo shook his head, grinning. “I’ve a friend who used to be like you,” he said. “Took me years to get him outside enough.”

“Lucky for me you won’t be here all that long then, isn’t it,” Kei replied, keeping his eyes straight ahead. A park, that was what he needed. Kuroo clearly needed to exercise more, and if his world was less built up then he would likely appreciate a part and keep _quiet_ . He might even go off and explore it by himself, although Kei didn’t hold much for his chances on _that_ front.

Kuroo noticeably brightened when they were surrounded by greenery again.

“Aha! I knew it couldn’t _all_ be paved over!” he cried, grinning broadly as he looked around. “Why all the concrete paths though?”

Kei stared at him. Just when he was finally starting to think Kuroo could pass for normal, he had to go and ask something like that.

“For _walking on_. So that people don’t get their feet dirty.”

Kuroo stopped in his tracks. “You…you never walk on the ground? You’re always on pavement or stone? What about feeling the grass between your toes?”

“Well, I dare say that _some_ people go barefoot from time to time, but that would be in their own gardens, or in the countryside,” Kei replied, wrinkling his nose. “They’re welcome to it. I prefer to stay clean.”

Kuroo narrowed his eyes, and for a moment Kei worried that he’d set off another culture-shock induced litany of complaints, but mercifully he stayed silent. In part because at that very moment, a child ran past chasing after a dog which had escaped its lead.

The dog itself had barrelled between them, almost knocking Kei over without particularly seeming to slow down.

“Come back, Jiro, come _baaack!_ ” the child wailed, vainly staggering after the animal on legs too short to stand a chance of finding it.

“Hey, don’t worry little girl, we’ll get your dog.”

What. What— _no!_

Kei drew himself up ready to tell Kuroo to find the damn dog _himself_ if he was so desperate to appease inattentive children, but a hand wrapped around his upper arm, and he had just enough time to take in the awestruck expression on the girl’s face before he was dragged into a run, nearly tripping as his legs rushed to coordinate themselves beneath him.

Somehow, against all laws of nature that he understood, Kuroo managed to keep a hold of him as they ran, grip sliding down so that it was around Kei’s wrist and they could really stretch their legs. This was just as well because neither of them were short, and the dog was hurdling low fences, benches, and flowerbeds alike—meaning that they too ended up doing the same. By the time Kuroo managed to get his fingers around the lead flapping along behind the dog, Kei was exhausted, aching, and above all _filthy_.

They’d run through a puddle somewhere, or possibly the edge of a pond for the difference it would have made. His legs were soaked from the knee down, and the water was rapidly seeping higher.

“What…the _hell_ …did you…do that for,” Kei panted between breaths after they finally came to a halt, dropping down to brace himself with his hands on his thighs.

Kuroo grinned. “Come on, you gotta help children like that. She was cute. And she was never gonna catch this dog herself. Lucky we were nearby, eh?”

Kei raised his head, glaring at Kuroo suspiciously. “I don’t trust you being this cheerful,” he said.

Kuroo laid his free hand over his heart. “I’m just a naturally kind person.”

The statement was so patently untrue that Kei was rendered speechless. Kind? _Kind?_ Clearly Kuroo had to be either delusional or in possession of the worst sense of humour in the entire world.

They trudged back to the little girl in silence, mostly because Kei was too exhausted to talk. The dog was a large one, almost the size of the child it had escaped from, and Kei couldn’t help but wonder why on earth her parents had allowed her to take it out for a walk by herself.

_Nope, not going there,_ he told himself. _We’re just giving the dog back, I’m not getting caught up in anyone else’s disastrous life._

“Jiro!” the girl cried as they returned, rushing forward and wrapping her arms around the shaggy dog’s neck.

Kei winced. If _they_ had gotten muddy on the harebrained chase, that was nothing compared with the dog. Did the little girl not _care?_ She was getting her clothes filthy.

“See, I said we’d bring him back!” Kuroo exclaimed, kneeling down beside her. He held out the reins. “Have you got him from here? He’s quite a large animal for someone so little, and he loves to run around a lot so I can’t promise he’ll behave from now on. I mean, I tried, don’t get me wrong, but he’s pretty stubborn.”

The girl giggled. “Mama’s just getting ice cream,” she said. “I was meant to wait by the lake but Jiro escaped and I…”

Kei sighed. “We should help you get back to your mother,” he said flatly. “Which part of the lake were you waiting at? Kuroo here can hold Jiro’s reins so he doesn’t escape again.”

The girl’s face lit up in a smile. “Thank you!” she cried. “Mama’s probably worrying—it’s just this way!”

Taking hold of Kuroo’s hand, she led him—and somehow, by default, Kei as well—along the path, chattering all the while about Jiro, and how big and good a dog he was, and how her Mama never normally took them to the park because she was working all the time, but it was a treat today so that was why she hadn’t known about Jiro always running away…

_I don’t deserve this,_ Kei told himself tiredly. _This is exactly why I told Aina I never wanted to have children. They’re too much work and they cause trouble._

Kuroo, of course, seemed to have naturally bonded with both child and dog alike. He chatted easily with the girl, holding her hand as easily and naturally as if they had known each other for years, and matching her slow pace without complaint. It was…irritating.

“Yukiko!” came a woman’s cry as they rounded a corner onto the lakeside. “Yukiko, oh thank heavens you’re safe! Where have you _been?_ ”

“Mama!” cried the girl, breaking into a run which threatened to overbalance Kuroo for a moment. Kei found himself smirking at the brief look of panic on the other man’s face. “Mama, Jiro ran off so I had to chase after him, but then these men said they would catch him instead because he was too fast for me.”

Kuroo broke into what Kei was quickly coming to recognise as his most practised, disarming smile as the woman looked towards them. “We couldn’t just let her run until Jiro got tired,” he said. “He was going much too fast for her to catch up. And then we thought we’d better bring her back here safely, in case Jiro got loose again.”

The woman looked at both of them with an expression of pure gratitude, but it was Kuroo doing the talking, and Kei standing off to one side, desperately willing the whole encounter to be over so that he could go home and change into some clean clothes. As a result—either of that, or of Kuroo’s unhelpfully non-specific magical powers, it was Kuroo who received the lion’s share of the mother’s gratitude and an entirely unnecessary cash reward for their troubles.

“Oh, no, I’m sure we don’t need—” Kei started, but was cut off by the woman.

“Nonsense! Look at the pair of you! You’ve gone to so much trouble to help my little girl, and then you brought her back to me safely. I was so worried! Please, let me thank you properly.”

“We appreciate your kindness,” Kuroo said, bowing and accepting the money. “I know I’m simply glad I was in the right place at the right time.”

Kei’s eyes narrowed, and he watched Kuroo suspiciously as the small family walked away, child still talking excitedly between mouthfuls of her half-melted ice cream.

“Was this you?” he asked, folding his arms. “I mean I wouldn’t put it past you—”

“What _exactly_ are you accusing me of?” Kuroo asked, hand on heart once more. “Somehow knowing there was a little girl with a dog that was too large for her in the area? Somehow getting the dog not only to break loose but to run right past us? That would take a pretty large amount of magic you know, and as I already explained, for some reason your world is alarmingly light on the stuff.”

He grinned. “Still, all’s well that ends well. There you were saying I would need this money of yours to buy new clothes, and here I am with a reward. I can replace your hideous things—preferably with something in red.”

Wrinkling his nose with distaste for the second time that day, Kei asked: “Red? Really?”

“It’s a good colour!” Kuroo cried. “Where can I get some clothes made or fitted? I don’t expect a full wardrobe, but I would at least hope I could get a shirt which fits me.”

A shopping trip hadn’t been at _all_ what Kei had planned for their walk, least of all when his trousers were covered in mud and still damp, but he somehow found himself leading the way back through the park and onto the subway. At least he had the entertainment of watching Kuroo’s face as they descended underground amid a thick crowd of people, and the man’s dawning realisation that they would be getting _into_ the metal subway train despite how packed it was.

“If I had my wings…” Kuroo muttered, but squeezed into the train beside Kei without any further complaints.

It was uncomfortable—and uncomfortably _intimate_ , packed together with no personal space and their heads towering above everyone else’s. He kept his eyes studiously on the window on the far side of the carriage, wincing at little each time they pulled into a station and the braking knocked them against each other.

It seemed like an agonising eternity before they emerged onto the streets once more, Kei studiously staring straight ahead of them as he led the way. Time for a slight change of plans then, because he did _not_ intend to repeat their subway experience if possible.

“There are a few shops here which should have everything you need,” he said as they walked along, trying not to smile at the way Kuroo stared at the eclectic fashion tastes of the pedestrians who flooded the fashion district’s streets. “You just have to put up with the crowds.”

“ _Everything?_ ” Kuroo asked. “I might not be used to worrying about money they way you mortals have gotten so fond of, but I’m fairly sure the payment that woman gave me won’t stretch that far.”

Kei fought down a self-conscious shrug and looked firmly at the upper storey of the building they were passing. “I’ll…cover the rest for now,” he muttered. “Just get a few shirts and some trousers and things. A pair of shoes would probably help, too.”

“What happened to you wanting me to get a job, then?”

Urgh. This was what Kei hated the most about doing something to help someone. They were never happy unless they questioned his motivations, and made everything a far bigger issue than it needed to be.

“You can pay me back if you actually _do_ get a job,” he said flatly. “But I don’t particularly want to have to come down here again any time soon, so it’s less hassle to just buy everything you need now. There’s no point going to the shops and just getting one shirt, and my job pays well enough that it’s not really any trouble.”

Based on everything he’d learnt about Kuroo over the few days they had been stuck together in his apartment, Kei was expecting some sort of would-be-witty retort. It never came. Instead, Kuroo simply watched him; an odd, unreadable expression on his face.

“That’s…kind of you, all the same,” Kuroo said at last, before his regular personality apparently reasserted itself and he added: “I suppose I must be rubbing off on you.”

Clothes shopping was somehow simultaneously less and more painful than he had anticipated. Kuroo mercifully seemed to grasp the concept of standardised sizing quite quickly, although he assured Kei that there wasn’t any particular need for him to try things on as he could alter their size to fit him perfectly well via magic. Apparently he had only refrained from adjusting those he had borrowed as they were Kei’s, and also ‘too horrendous to waste what little magic he had’ on them.

It would have been entirely painless, then, but for the fact that Kuroo seemed determined to make Kei buy things he had absolutely no use or desire for, and had no qualms about creating a scene when Kei refused.

“Just _try_ them!” Kuroo said of a pair of running shoes—which were far too brightly coloured even if Kei had been considering taking up running.

“Where’s your sense of fun?” was his response when Kei refused to try on a lurid, floral print shirt, made all the worse when Kuroo attempted to push him into the changing cubicle afterward.

“Oh come on, _live_ a little!” he commented after Kei refused to buy—of all things—a black leather jacket with studded shoulders. When Kei dared to stick to his principles Kuroo rounded up half the shop’s clientele to back himself up, and caused such a scene that it was a minor miracle they weren’t kicked out.

By the time they staggered back to Kei’s apartment, laden with several more bags than needed to be there—including two or three filled with purchases for himself which he hadn’t planned to make—Kei was bitterly regretting every bit of generosity he had shown.

“Listen,” he said flatly, as the door closed behind them. “You…you can’t… Aren’t you meant to be going _home?_ ”

“Oho, you’re tiring of my company already?” Kuroo asked.

“I have never been anything _other_ than tired of it,” Kei snapped. “I didn’t ask you to barge into my life. I didn’t ask you to…to…practically hold me hostage in my own home. You said you would be _leaving_ soon. Although I can’t imagine why I believed you there, because you also said you would help me and so far you’ve done nothing of the sort.”

Kuroo raised an eyebrow. “I’ve helped you plenty,” he said. “Even though it’s only been a few days, and I’m still getting used to how this world works.”

“ _How?_ ” Kei exclaimed. He couldn’t believe it. Was Kuroo _delusional?_

“You’ll see.”

“No, I won’t! I… You know what? I want you gone. How do we break this ‘bargain’ of yours—you need to go home? Show me. At this point I will do whatever it takes to get rid of you.”

For the first time Kuroo seemed to falter, smile fixing in place even as it fell from his eyes. No, no it wasn’t the first—Kei had seen flashes of that expression before. It had just always been buried away too quickly for Kei to fully acknowledge it until that point. He looked uneasy, almost  _lost_.

Kuroo shook his head. “Wow, this world really—” He cut himself off and sighed, leaning against the wall. “You want to see it then?”

Kei narrowed his eyes suspiciously.

“The _portal_ , human. You want to see why I’m stuck here?”

“What I want is to sleep for a week,” Kei said. Something about the heaviness in Kuroo’s voice was throwing him off-balance. Since when had the man not had some sort of witty comeback? “But tomorrow is the last day I have before I go back to work so right now I’ll settle for a shower and a clean change of clothes. I’m not leaving this apartment again until I _feel_ human.”

 

* * *

 

By the time they left the house the sky was tinged red with the sunset. The air was cooler and the streets empty of foot traffic, if not the vehicular kind.

Kuroo watched the cars warily.

“This is what happens when you can’t fly, eh?” he asked calmly, apparently past his little moment in the apartment.

“So it would seem.”

“How do you put up with the _noise_ all the time though? It’s so loud.”

Kei raised his eyebrows. “I stay indoors with the windows closed. Or I _would_ , but you seem insistent on dragging me outside as many times as you can in one single day.”

Kuroo smiled, but it was another one of those odd things which didn’t meet his eyes.

“And you…you’re _happy_ like that? Honestly I can’t get my head around it.”

Kei shrugged. “Not that I actually have to explain myself, but I do go out from time to time. I was out when I ran into you, wasn’t I?”

“Yeah, you looked _really_ happy about it, too. Clearly this life plan of yours is working out just great.”

It was uncanny how Kuroo could start— _start_ , at least—to worm his way into Kei’s good books only to undo every scrap of goodwill he’d earnt with just a sentence. It was also uncanny how calmly he was leading them both across the city without appearing lost at all, despite apparently only having travelled these streets once. And in the dark, no less. Kei found himself hanging back.

“You _attacked_ me,” he said.

“You still think that? I had been in your world for all of a _minute_ at that point. I honestly didn’t even see you until you ran into me.”

Kei ignored that blatant retelling of events and instead asked: “If you were so disoriented, explain how you’re able to find your way through this city so well. You’re even taking short cuts—and I definitely didn’t go this way when you followed me home.”

Kuroo halted, and looked at their surroundings. They’d stopped along a quiet, semi-industrial street. Buildings crowded over them on either side of the road and the few pedestrians studiously ignored them. Given that Kuroo had elected to wear the gaudiest red jacket he’d obtained that afternoon and his hair was…well…like _that_ , Kei had to admire their self-restraint.

“It’s the magic,” Kuroo said after a moment. “It’s stronger here—keeps getting stronger as we get closer to the portal. It must be leaking through.”

Kei gritted his teeth. “So you’re telling me you could have gone back at _any time_ if you’d come over here?”

Kuroo shook his head. “Stronger isn’t the same as actually strong, you know. Shifting uses a lot of magic, and I have to _hold_ it. The portal’s… Well, you’ll see, I guess. Not to mention, I _did_ try it before.”

The streets looked very different in daylight than they had on the few occasions he had walked along them after a night out. Even with the sun setting around them and casting long, blueish shadows, the tops of the buildings were tinted red and gold. It was picturesque, after a fashion. So long as you didn’t look down at the dirt and litter which had accumulated here and there, too close to the industrial parts of the city to be cleaned regularly.

“Here,” Kuroo said at last, pointing down the street in which they had met. It took a moment for Kei to recognise it.

“ _Here?_ ” he asked. “I don’t see any kind of portal.”

“Well you wouldn’t,” Kuroo said, shrugging. “It’s not exactly on view—which is probably for the best, if your world isn’t used to them staying open.”

They stopped about a third of the way along, near a stack of rubbish left out for collection in the morning. The sole shopfront in the street—which Kei honestly hadn’t even noticed before—was already closed and shuttered for the night.

“It’s here,” Kuroo said, pointing at a drainpipe which ran down between the two buildings. “Inside the pipe.”

Kei stared at it. No. No, that was _ridiculous_. He could wrap his hands around the pipe and they would overlap. He could probably manage to get just the one hand around most of it. To fit through that Kuroo would have to have been absolutely _tiny_.

“I mean if you don’t believe me you can look,” Kuroo said, shrugging. “It’s not far up. There’s a bit of light on the other side. It’s still mid-morning over there.”

“ _What?_ ”

Kuroo nodded, looking away down the alley. Which wasn’t suspicious at _all_. “Yeah, the difference in time threw me off a little at first, I will admit.”

“You can’t honestly expect me to believe there’s a portal to another world inside that drain pipe,” Kei said flatly. “What do you want me to do, get down on my hands and knees and _look?_ I have no desire to make an ass of myself, thanks all the same.”

He wasn’t sure what exactly he had been expecting Kuroo to say—something witty or sarcastic perhaps, or even another sob story—but he _definitely_ wasn’t expecting the angry snarl and the way Kuroo’s eyes actually _flashed_ in the darkness.

“Why are you so determined to disbelieve everything I say?” Kuroo snapped, turning on one heel to face Kei again.

His expression was hard, angular, and hardly seemed to belong to the same person. Kei took a step back as Kuroo leant forward, then another and bumped into the wall, eyes widening. Kuroo’s ears even seemed to be stretching slightly—okay, yeah, they were _definitely_ longer, pointed ends narrowed and sharp.

“Have you not noticed that I have _never_ lied to you? That every word I utter is true? And has it not sunk in to you yet that I am not some passing vagabond—that I have _power?_ Real and tangible, and strong enough that mortals of old would tell stories about my people to their children each night, warning them to be careful lest we have cause to _use_ it?”

Kei blinked. Kuroo was _threatening_ him. Actually, genuinely threatening him—and fairly effectively he supposed. Somehow, with the transformation Kuroo actually _did_ seem intimidating, instead of just casually (and, Kei was almost prepared to admit, charmingly) irritating. His face had lost all its smoothness; all the gentleness it had taken on when speaking to a little girl and her lost dog. All the little imperfections, too. All the things which made him _him_ had faded into nothingness as he spoke. It was as though he’d become another person entirely. And there was no ignoring it any more, much as he had tried: Kuroo was shockingly handsome—beautiful even—but as real and human in that moment as if he’d been carved from stone.

The stare stretched on, and on, until Kei realised that he wasn’t actually alarmed anymore, so much as he was angry. How dare he. How _dare_ he!

“Are you quite done?” he snapped, half surprised he was still capable of talking. He’d partway expected Kuroo’s ‘power’ to have stopped him.

Kuroo pulled himself up sharply, blinking. If he hadn’t still looked a hair’s breadth from wanting to murder something, it would almost have been funny.

“Because if you’re done,” Kei went on, pointedly ignoring the corner of his mind which had observed that they were alone in a quiet and secluded alleyway and no one was within earshot, “I’d like to remind you that we met when you _deceived_ me into letting you into my house, and then tricked me once again to get yourself a permanent invite. In the week since, you’ve invaded my privacy at every possible opportunity. I can’t say I’m all that bothered about whether the words coming out of your mouth are true or not when everything else about you is as dishonest and self-serving as it comes. And now you’re angry. Big deal. Everyone gets angry when they can’t have their way, so I can’t say I’m completely surprised. Still, while you’re not the first person trick me and it’s unlikely you’ll be the last, at least the others didn’t throw a temper tantrum when they realised I’d caught onto their game.”

He folded his arms for the illusion of a barrier it created between them, and wondered if he’d gone too far this time. After all, he’d _known_ Kuroo wasn’t human before, but knowing that in the back of his mind was different from _seeing_ it; from the facts playing out in front of him as Kuroo’s face shifted from its cold, stone beauty into something else he couldn’t quite place.

_Oh_ , his mind unhelpfully supplied a moment later, _it’s the lost and uneasy expression. Apparently that looks different when he’s like this too._

Kuroo took a step back, drawing himself up and inward a little. His face shifted again, turning neutral and calm.

“I’m beginning to understand why my people stopped coming here,” he said at last. “This world… Do you know, that’s the first time someone has _ever_ insulted me so directly.” He shook his head. “Ha! But you don’t, do you? You don’t know _anything_ —and somehow now I’m the one who feels ignorant instead.”

He sighed, and the sharp, angles of his face melted away into the features Kei recognised from the last few days.

“The portal is here,” he said, walking over to the drain pipe and pointing to a section an arm’s length off the ground. “The metal of the pipe is—it’s taken on the properties of the material we use to hold portals open, so I can’t just move it away and hop through. Without the containment it could close at any time—or, given that it’s been held stable so long, it might just keep growing larger and larger with nothing to stop it. You’ll understand why I’m hesitant to chance that, I hope. And I can’t fly back _up_ the pipe either, because if I shift in your world I’ll have all of a split-second or so before I bounce back. And yes, before you ask, I have _tried_.”

They both stared at the pipe for a few long, long seconds.

At last Kei could stand the silence no longer. “This is…you realise this sounds insane right?”

“Doesn’t change the fact it’s true though,” Kuroo said, shrugging. There was something just wistful enough about his voice that made it impossible to disbelieve him.

Kei sighed. He hated making an ass of himself, but apparently that was what his life had been reduced to. There was no way he could just walk away from the dratted pipe without at least _looking_ anymore.

Pushing past Kuroo he crouched down in the gap between the buildings, grimacing as he realised he would have to brace himself on the grubby wall in order to actually lean forward and look up the damn pipe. Great. Just great.

The small window of daylight partway up the guttering which met his eyes was, despite everything, not what he had been expecting. It was _bright_ , and there was a patch of greenery visible to one side—leaves from an unseen tree rustling in a breeze. He could hear them, along with the sound of birdsong somewhere in the distance, slightly muffled and given an echo by the pipe.

“Right,” he said, forcing himself to move away slowly and get to his feet before turning back to face Kuroo again. His control cracked just enough that he added without really thinking:

“Just how small _were_ you?”

Kuroo grinned at him, charm firmly back in place. He shrugged. “A bit smaller than the palm of my hand is now, I’d guess. I don’t usually go down _that_ small, but I could see the pipe from my world so I knew I’d need the extra room for my wings. Wasn’t sure how far it’d go before opening out. Lucky for me it wasn’t longer, to be honest.”

“Right,” Kei said again. He wasn’t particularly sure what else he _could_ say.

“So, as you can see, I’m rather stranded in your world,” Kuroo went on, shrugging. “I hadn’t particularly planned to stick around here for very long, but, well. Doesn’t seem I actually have much of a choice for the time being. The amount of magic _is_ getting stronger here than it was when we met—as I said, it must be leaking through—but in all honesty, I don’t know how long it will take it to reach a point where I can safely get back.”

“And, what, because you know my name that’s somehow enough to stop me from kicking you out, is it?” Kei said, looking briefly up and down the road. If anyone overheard them they’d probably try to have them both committed.

“No, no it’s more _complicated—_ ”

Kuroo sighed, and threw his hands up in the air in a gesture of exaggerated surrender. “Actually, you know what? Sure. Why not. Let’s go with that.” He rubbed his temples and added: “Not like it seems to make much difference here, anyway.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm optimistic about getting the third and final chapter out within the next few days, but I am kiiinda juggling deadlines at the moment (and away on holiday!) so it may not arrive quite so promptly as this chapter has. I've made a good, solid start on it though, so fingers crossed it won't be long!


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